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and military leader and one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators.
Hitler converted Germany into a fully militarized society and launched
World War II in 1939 (see Federal Republic of Germany). He made anti-
Semitism a keystone of his propaganda and policies and built the Nazi Party
(see National Socialism) into a mass movement. He hoped to conquer the
entire world, and for a time dominated most of Europe and much of North
Africa. He instituted sterilization and euthanasia measures to enforce his
idea of racial purity among German people and caused the slaughter of
millions of Jews, Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), Slavic peoples, and many others,
all of whom he considered inferior.
II EARLY YEARS
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, in 1889, the
fourth child of Klara and Alois Hitler. Hitler’s father worked his way up in the
Austrian customs service to a position of considerable status, and as a
result Hitler had a comfortable childhood. Hitler began school in 1900, and
his grades were above average. It was decided that he would attend
Realschule, a secondary school that prepared students for further study and
emphasized modern languages and technical subjects. However, Hitler and
his father strongly differed about career plans. His father wanted him to
enter the civil service; Hitler insisted on becoming an artist. As a result,
Hitler did poorly in Realschule, having to repeat the first year and improving
little thereafter.
During this time, Hitler began to form his political views: a strong sense of
German nationalism, the beginnings of anti-Semitism, and a distaste for the
ruling family and political structure of Austria-Hungary. Like many German-
speaking citizens of Austria-Hungary, Hitler considered himself first and
foremost a German.
The death of Hitler’s father in January 1903 changed the family. The
survivors' income was adequate to support Hitler, his mother, and his sister,
but the absence of a dominant father figure altered Hitler's position in the
family. He spent much time playing and dreaming, did poorly in his studies,
and left school entirely in 1905 after the equivalent of the ninth grade.
A Time in Vienna
Hitler had hoped to become an artist but was rejected as unqualified by the
Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in October 1907. His mother died in 1908, and
Hitler pretended to continue his studies in Vienna in order to receive an
orphan’s pension. In reality, he mostly wandered about the city admiring its
public buildings and frequently attending operas, especially those of
Richard Wagner, whom Hitler adored for his heroic portrayals of German
mythology.
When he had exhausted his inherited funds, Hitler, unwilling to take a job,
ended up in a homeless shelter. It was there that he was first exposed to
extreme political ideas, particularly the racial concepts of Lanz von
Liebenfels. Liebenfels published a periodical about the supposed superiority
of Aryans, an ill-defined race which included Germans, and the inferiority of
other races, especially Jews. At the same time Hitler acquired a hatred for
socialism and came to equate it with the Jews.
Between 1910 and 1913 Hitler’s life improved when he began to paint and
sell postcards and pictures for a living, copying famous paintings and
drawing public buildings. He debated ideas with others in the hostel in
which he lived, developing the beginnings of his public speaking style.
Failure to register for the draft in Austria led him to flee for Munich,
Germany, in 1913 to escape Austrian authorities. He was extradited to
Austria but was found physically unfit to serve in the military. He then
returned to Munich.
B World War I
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 came as an opportunity for Hitler, as
his money was running out. He volunteered for a Bavarian unit in the
German army and served the whole war. Though repeatedly decorated for
bravery, he was never promoted beyond private first class. In a war of very
high casualties, this is difficult to explain. Perhaps officers considered him a
loner who could carry messages and perform other dangerous duties but
who was unsuited to command men.
Hitler saw trench warfare as a form of the struggle for survival among
races, a struggle that he was coming to see as the essence of existence. At
the same time, his anti-Semitic feelings were growing extreme. When
Germany was defeated in 1918, Hitler was lying in a military hospital,
temporarily blinded by mustard gas. He decided Jews had caused
Germany’s defeat and that he would enter politics to save the country.
Though still in the army, Hitler quickly became the new spokesman for the
party. His talent for public speaking and the use of the local army's
resources to generate publicity drew large audiences to events sponsored
by an organization that had only 100 to 200 members. When he presented
the party's official program to a gathering on February 24, 1920, there were
almost 2000 present.
Hitler was discharged from the army the following month, and he soon
attained dominance in the Nazi party. He was the party’s most effective
recruiter and, thanks to paid attendance at his speeches, its most
successful fundraiser. When opposed within the party, he found ways to
push out rivals and dissenters. Several times he did so by threatening to
leave the party himself. Hitler obtained enough support to have himself
chosen as Führer (absolute leader) of the party on July 29, 1921.
Allies (those countries who had fought against Germany) had demanded
that Germany pay reparations—that is, payments for war damages. The
government refused to pay all that was demanded by the Allies. When
Germany failed to pay enough, France and Belgium occupied the coal mines
in the Ruhr industrial area in west central Germany in January 1923.
Undaunted, Hitler and his men led a march to the center of Munich the
following day. State police halted the march, shooting started, and 16 of
Hitler's followers were killed. Lacking mass support, Hitler had no chance
against the police and military power of the Bavarian government. The so-
called Beer Hall putsch (revolt) had failed. Hitler fled but was soon arrested
and tried. In court he practically took over the proceedings, denouncing
both the Weimar Republic and the Bavarian government. Hitler was
sentenced to five years in prison for treason, but was released after less
than one year.
volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle, translated 1939); after his release he
continued with a second volume. This work contained many of his basic
ideas. Hitler believed that history was the record of struggles among races.
He held that the superior Aryan race, centered in Germany, would be the
final victor and would rule the world. But to win this struggle, Germany
would have to be ruled by a dictator and would have to be racially aware.
Racial awareness would come through a process of mobilizing the masses
with propaganda that appealed to their feelings, not their reason, and
aroused their hatred for all other allegedly inferior races, especially Jews. No
class or other distinctions in German society mattered.
E Increasing Popularity
In 1928 Hitler began his attempt to build the power of the party by
democratic means. In the 1928 election the Nazi Party received just under 3
percent of the vote, but during the campaign it had gathered a strong base.
In 1929 a new settlement of the war reparations question, the Young Plan,
was adopted, opening up the possibility of an early end to the remaining
foreign occupation of a portion of Germany. Such an event might stabilize
the republic, and in fear of this, the republic’s opponents organized a
national initiative against the plan. This initiative, which was financed by
the German nationalist Alfred Hugenberg, provided Hitler with opportunities
to speak throughout Germany. The initiative to stop the Young Plan failed,
but Hitler had recruited new followers who not only believed his message
but were also willing to finance the Nazi Party.
In late 1929 the first effects of the worldwide economic depression were felt
in Germany. The last government of the Weimar Republic based on a
majority in the Reichstag (the German parliament) was not able to cope
with the crisis and fell in March 1930. President Paul von Hindenburg
appointed a new government led by Heinrich Brüning as chancellor (prime
minister). However, Brüning and the Reichstag could not agree on how to
resolve the crisis. Hindenburg dissolved the legislature and operated the
government by emergency decree, rather than through the normal
legislative procedure. In new elections held that September, the Nazis
scored a great electoral breakthrough, increasing their representation in the
Reichstag from 12 to 107.
The victory of the Nazi Party, which had campaigned vigorously for the
repudiation of all of Germany's financial obligations, caused foreign
investors to withdraw their money from Germany, and the German banking
system collapsed due to lack of capital. As economic conditions worsened,
the appeal of the Nazis was far more effective than that of other parties:
The Nazis were the one group that claimed to have all the answers. In a
short time, the other political parties lost voters to the Nazis.
Unemployment rose drastically, and in this time of great economic hardship
many who had never voted before were drawn to the Nazi Party, which
offered simplistic but appealing solutions to their problems and was not tied
to one class or interest group. Consequently, they believed it could
establish a government that would be more effective than the republic. In
elections held in 1932, the Nazis received more votes than any other party,
and Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor.
to rid the Aryan race of undesirable elements and eliminate other races that
he considered inferior and dangerous to the Germans. First, the
government approved marriage loans to the “right kind” of Germans—those
whose ancestors and appearance measured up to the Nazi’s standard of
Aryan purity. These loans were repaid as the newlyweds produced babies.
To discourage the propagation of the “wrong kind” of people, a law required
the compulsory sterilization of men and women deemed likely to have
defective children, primarily those with physical or mental handicaps. By
1945 some 400,000 Germans had been sterilized.
The first discriminatory laws against Jews also came in 1933. These laws
barred Jews from government employment and restricted their admission to
universities. In subsequent years, the anti-Semitic laws became increasingly
harsh, as Jews were deprived of citizenship, excluded from more and more
jobs, forbidden to own cars, thrown out of public schools, and stripped of
their property. These events culminated in Kristallnacht (the “Night of
Broken Glass”), the night of November 9, 1938, when Nazi mobs killed
dozens of Jews, smashed thousands of windows in Jewish neighborhoods,
and set fire to almost all Jewish houses of worship throughout Germany.
Following Kristallnacht, the Nazis sent more than 30,000 Jews to
concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of others fled the country.
B Rearmament of Germany
Starting in 1933, Hitler began the process of German rearmament and
militarization that would eventually lead to World War II. Hitler’s plans for
conquest consisted of four distinct wars. The first war would be against
Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). He was certain that
the Czechs would put up little resistance and Czech territory and resources
could then be used to further his continuing plans for conquest. Hitler’s
second war would be against Britain and France. He expected this to be the
most difficult conflict, as these countries had defeated Germany during
World War I. Hitler prepared for this war during the 1930s.
The third war would be against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), where Hitler planned to seize huge portions of territory for German
settlement. However, Hitler badly miscalculated when he assumed the
conquest of the USSR would be simple. His assumption was based on his
belief that the Soviets, many of whom were of Slavic descent, were an
inferior race controlled by the Jews under the guise of socialism. As a result,
Hitler made no military preparations for that war and counted on a quick
victory to provide Germany with the resources, especially the oil, needed
for the fourth war, which was to be waged against the United States. Hitler
felt that actually fighting the Americans would be easy, but technical
preparations for the conflict had to be made well in advance because the
United States was far away and had a large navy.
self-sufficiency he knew that Nazi forces alone could not overcome the
major European powers—at least not at first—and he began to seek allies.
Hitler had long hoped to win the support of Italy in any coming war. He
admired Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whose nationalistic and militaristic
policies mirrored his own. This admiration was reciprocated, and in 1936,
Hitler and Mussolini established the Rome-Berlin Axis. Hitler then turned to
Japan as a possible ally against Britain and France. In 1940 the Rome-Berlin
Axis was extended to include Japan and became the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis.
begin the first of his wars, that against Czechoslovakia. Hitler planned to
crush Czechoslovakia, use its sizeable ethnic German population to enlarge
his army, and expel or kill its non-German inhabitants. To build support for
this plan, the Nazis organized a massive propaganda campaign in Germany,
which portrayed ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia as victims of repression
and discrimination at the hands of the Czechs. This campaign was
unsuccessful—too many Germans remembered the horrors of the last war,
and too few hated the Czechs. In addition to this lack of domestic support,
there was unexpected foreign pressure against an invasion. Mussolini urged
Hitler to negotiate, and Britain took a firm stand in support of
Czechoslovakia.
Hitler called off the invasion in favor of negotiations, which ended in the
Munich Pact. By the terms of this agreement, Czechoslovakia ceded to
Germany portions of its land that were inhabited by ethnic Germans—
primarily the area in western Czechoslovakia know as the Sudetenland.
Hitler accepted this agreement against his better judgment; he really
wanted a war that would destroy Czechoslovakia. For the rest of his life, he
considered this his worst mistake, and he was determined never to be
cheated of war again.
In the winter of 1938 and 1939 Hitler believed the time had come for war
with France and Britain. Those countries hoped war could be avoided; the
experience of World War I had convinced them that even a victorious war
would not be worth the cost. As a result, leaders in London and Paris had
worked hard to settle whatever international issues might arise and to
escape war if at all possible. The idea that anyone might actually want war
was inconceivable to them. The signs that Germany was looking for further
expansion even after Munich, however, led the British and French
governments to decide in early 1939 that if Germany took action against
any other country and that country resisted, they would go to war.
Germany’s breaking of the Munich Pact by occupying most of the rest of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939 pushed the bulk of the British and French
peoples behind this agreement.
C Final Preparations
Before attacking in the west, Hitler needed to secure two things: a quiet
front on Germany's eastern border and allies against Britain and France.
The first of these meant subordinating Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland to
Germany. A change of government in Hungary favored Hitler’s aims. He
then successfully intimidated Lithuania into submitting to the Germans and
annexed the formerly-German region of Memel, which had been ceded to
Lithuania after World War I. The Poles, however, were unwilling to surrender
without a fight. Hitler decided to conquer Poland first and then turn to the
west. As for securing allies, Italy was willing but Japan hesitant. Japan was
interested only in an ally against the USSR, not against France and Britain.
In a reversal of his former anti-Communist stance, Hitler turned to the
USSR.
The Soviets had made offers of agreements in prior years, but Hitler had
turned them away. Now, in Hitler’s eyes, the USSR could help destroy
Poland and then provide Germany with supplies while Nazi forces defeated
Britain and France. Then Hitler would crush the Soviets. Consequently,
concessions made to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made no difference to
Hitler—they would all be taken back later. Hitler offered Stalin whatever he
wanted to get an agreement signed. Inducements included a plan to split
eastern Europe between the Germans and the Soviets, and a promise that
the USSR need only remain neutral in case of a German conflict with
another nation, instead of having to fight on the German side. The deal was
signed on August 23, 1939. Germany's ambassadors to London, Paris, and
the Polish capital of Warsaw were recalled from their posts. On Hitler’s
orders, the invasion of Poland began on September 1, 1939. Almost
immediately, Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had
begun.
German army, and the country quickly fell. Hitler had originally hoped to
attack in the west in late 1939, but bad weather forced postponement. In
the meantime the German navy urged an occupation of Denmark and
Norway and war with the United States. Hitler agreed to the first, an
operation conducted in April 1940, but preferred to postpone war with the
United States until he could either complete construction of a navy large
enough to fight the Americans or could acquire an ally who had one. In May
and June of 1940, Hitler’s forces routed the armies of the Netherlands,
Belgium, and France.
Although Hitler failed to subdue Britain, he felt that by driving all resistance
off the European continent he had effectively won the war in the west. He
immediately accelerated the preparations for war with the United States
and decided to attack the USSR in the fall of 1940. The British refusal to
surrender confirmed his decision to attack the USSR; advice from the
military led him to delay the invasion until late spring of 1941. Hitler
believed the United States would come to Britain’s aid, and a German
invasion of the USSR would encourage Japan to attack the Americans before
they had a chance to help the British. He also encouraged a Japanese attack
by promising to join Japan in a war against the United States. Japan had the
large navy Hitler felt he needed.
The invasion of the USSR was launched in spite of Stalin’s attempts to
prevent it. Even though Hitler had been massing troops on the border with
the USSR for several weeks prior to the invasion, Stalin insisted that Soviet
forces should take no action that could provoke the Nazis. His policies
proved futile, and the attack began on June 22, 1941. The Germans
completely underestimated the USSR, however, especially the ability of its
government to control and mobilize the country’s resources. The Soviet
army halted and then defeated the Germans in 1941 and crushed
subsequent German offensives in 1942 and 1943.
A The Holocaust
As his armies were rolling through Polish resistance, Hitler stepped up the
elimination of peoples he saw as inferior to Germans. Shortly after their
1939 conquest of Poland, the Germans began killing thousands of Poles and
driving thousands more out of their homes to make way for German
settlers. The Nazis also herded Jewish Poles into city ghettoes, killing
thousands of them and condemning the rest to starvation. Within Germany,
Hitler ordered a program to systematically kill handicapped Germans, and
over 200,000 were eventually murdered.
The German authorities planned to kill all Jews in the portions of the USSR
they occupied and began the process in the summer of 1941. In late July
1941, Hitler decided to extend the systematic killing of Jews to all of
German-occupied Europe. After the renewed German offensive in the USSR
in October 1941 appeared to make great progress, he decided the time had
come to go even further: All Jews on earth would be killed. However, the
Nazis found that German police and soldiers who did the killing were often
traumatized by the experience. To make the slaughter faster and less
stressful, the Germans built specially designed death camps, primarily in
occupied Poland, to which Jews and other prisoners from all over Europe
were transported. These camps contained large gas chambers where
hundreds of prisoners at a time could be quickly, easily, and impersonally
murdered by poison gas.
Underestimating the Americans, Hitler launched his last reserves west into
the Ardennes country of Belgium and Luxembourg in the Battle of the Bulge
(December 1944-January 1945). He felt that despite massive Allied gains, a
hard blow would cause popular support for the war in America to collapse,
and would lead to the disintegration of the coalition arrayed against him. All
he accomplished, however, was to draw away troops needed in the east,
allowing the Soviet army's winter offensive to roll all the way to the gates of
Berlin. Hitler decided to remain in the city, hoping to inspire its defenders
and anticipating a breakup of the Allies’ alliance. When neither of these
hopes were realized, he appointed Karl Dönitz, the head of the navy and a
devoted Nazi, as his successor. He then married his mistress Eva Braun and
committed suicide in Berlin on April 30, 1945.
VII EVALUATION
Hitler left Germany and much of Europe in ruins. Over 60 million people
died worldwide in the war, and tens of millions more lost their health and
homes. Certain that they did not want to fight the Germans a third time, the
Allies insisted on an unconditional surrender. They occupied all of Germany
and divided it into British, French, American, and Soviet zones. Even after
the western zones were joined into the Federal Republic of Germany in
1949, the country remained divided until 1990.
The German people discovered for the first time the extent to which
modern warfare could destroy a country. World War I had not been fought
to any great extent on German soil. The events of the war also
demonstrated to many Germans the problems of dictatorship. Increasing
numbers were now prepared to try a different, democratic, path at home,
as well as an attempt at reconciliation with their neighbors. Both projects
would take time, but they were major departures in the history of Germany
and of Europe.
The war also brought the Soviet Army into central Europe and provided the
Soviet regime with legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, a new empire in
east and southeast Europe, and superpower status in the world. The world
role of the United States was also enhanced in spite of the American
preference for remaining aloof. Outside of Europe, the war hastened the
end of colonial empires and the emergence of the new Jewish state of
Israel. It also brought about the creation of new international organizations
like the United Nations (UN) that might prevent such wars in the future.
Ironically, these developments were the exact opposite of what Hitler had
hoped for. His ambition to make Berlin the capital of the world was not
realized, and the enormous buildings he started designing for it in the
1920s were never built. Hitler combined organizational and manipulative
talents with great cunning. He was simultaneously obsessed with fantastic
visions and blinded to reality by those very visions. However, many
Germans shared at least a portion of those visions. This support made it
possible for Hitler to utilize the resources of Europe's second largest
population and most advanced economy to pursue his ends. The result was
an outburst of destruction that consumed the lives of millions and
transformed the world.
Contributed By:
Gerhard L. Weinberg
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